Devastating story.....soldiers obit on NPR.

[QuettaKid]

Just listen to his 3 year old son talk about his dad not coming home anymore.....ever.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4760255

[Clark2008]

1. I can't. I'm sorry. I can't listen to that.

:cry:

[brainshrub]

2. Mr. Woods was murdered by the NeoCons in the White House.

IMO, the pro-corporate NeoCons murdered Eric Woods and left his son fatherless. In a just world, President Bush would be sitting in a prison cell right now.

This child is going to grow up knowing that his dad died for nothing. So much for "Republican Family Values."

To the trolls reading this: If you support the President, you enabled the murder of Mr. Woods. You are cowards hiding behind "support our troops" rhetoric to hide the suffering, death and fraud that your ideology spawns.

[maxsolomon]

7. its unlikely he'll grow up thinking his dad died for nothing

his mother & all his relatives will rationalize it & tell him easy half-truths that make it bearable:

he died protecting your freedom.
he was a hero.

[brainshrub]

8. So true.

The same half-truths used to rationalize Mr. Woods murder will justify the creation of more single-parents.

It's a story as old as warefare.

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. That poor family :^(

[proud patriot]

4. Sounds like a great person

:cry:

[maxsolomon]

5. i didn't find it devastating. maybe i'm just numb.

i found it typical & illustrative.

small town kid concentrates on sports during his youth. skips college. marries by 19, kids by 20. little education & no perspective on the place & importance of art, literature, history, politics (if he'd read zinn's people's history in 11th grade instead of wrestling, would he join the military?).

smart enough to know he's built a box & that he should have ambition beyond window blind installation. thinks the only way out of the box is the military & access to medical education.

once in, does his job well. dies, ultimately, for the common, predictable flag waving lies of the oligarchy who wouldn't piss on iowa or omaha from 40,000 feet in a lear jet. in a third world shithole that we will eventually, sooner or later, withdraw from.

repeat ad nauseum x 1700.

i feel sympathy for the kid but hope he won't repeat his father's path in 18 years. given the fact that americans have apparently never learned a single lesson from Vietnam (or we wouldn't be repeating it, mistake for mistake), i don't have much faith.

[dogday]

6. This is personal to me

I have a son who leaves in October for Afghanistan. I have a terrible time with these stories but I know they are necessary...

[Number9Dream]

9. Damn all the chickenhawks to hell!

"I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well-placed... managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units...Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country." (Colin Powell’s autobiography, My American Journey, p. 148). Every war, it's always the same.